Ralph Schinder has posted about a new development in the world of Zend Framwork distribution - a PEAR channel.

For the past few months, the ZF team has been playing with the idea of releasing ZF from a PEAR channel. Over the past 2 years, we have seen a few channels distributing ZF that have pop up here and there.. so that lead us to believe there is an itch that needs scratching. The compelling reason against a PEAR channel is that, with ZF, there is nothing to "install". Just pop ZF in your include_path and off you go.

With the introduction of the next release (1.8) and the Zend_Tool component that comes with it, the framework is graduating from a "component library" into a more holistic framework with a more advanced distribution system. For those interested, he also includes the details of the channel (from pear.zfcampus.org) and the organizational plan of how the channel is laid out.